Tag: Cortex

We are proud to announce the immediate availability of Cerana 0.9 (TheHive 3.0.9) and Cortex 2.0.4. These hotfix releases address a number of issues and we encourage you to update your current installation at your earliest opportunity. For your comfort and sanity. Seriously.

Note: the Bluecoat analyzer was removed since it does not comply with the updated Terms of Service of Symantec Web Pulse SiteReview. Symantec does no longer permit programmatic querying of the service.

Fixes in Cerana 0.9

#527: display long reports when the analyst clicks on the corresponding short reports. Meh!

#541: make the drop-down menu for case templates scroll when there is a truckload of them.

Support

Something does not work as expected? You have troubles installing or upgrading? Spotted new bugs? No worries, please open issues on GitHub or comment on existing ones, join our user forum, contact us on Gitter, or send us an email at support@thehive-project.org. We are here to help.

Correction: April 14, 2018An earlier version of this post did not mention that the Bluecoat analyzer was removed in the latest Cortex Analyzers repository release.

There’s a new version of your ultimate observable analysis engine in town : Cortex 2.0.3 is out!

Cortex 2.0.3 contains a few important enhancements over its predecessor and fixes a number bugs as described in the full changelog summarised below. So get it while it’s still hot out of the digital oven and let us know how tasty it is.

Source : Quickmeme.com

Implemented Enhancements

#81: reflect proxy changes in the global configuration at the analyzer level

You can read the full changelog if you like but if you want to enjoy the goods right away, git pull is your friend.

Support

Something does not work as expected? You have troubles installing or upgrading? Spotted new bugs? No worries, please open issues on GitHub or comment on existing ones, join our user forum, contact us on Gitter, or send us an email at support@thehive-project.org. We are here to help.

After announcing Cortex 2.0.0 and TheHive 3.0.7, the first version of your favorite SIRP that is (supposedly) compatible with the brand-new version of Cortex, last week, we thought it was time to relax and enjoy the upcoming, long Easter weekend, the sunny sky of Paris (if you can pierce the veil of the Forever Grey Cloud™ that is hanging over the city of lights), and great jazz music. Heck, I even tweeted about it … only to be proven wrong by Life (and Murphy).

We literally field tested Cortex 2 for 3 weeks, we squashed bugs here and there, until almost the very last minute before the release. And yet, our QA needs to be improved by leaps and bounds as we had to release Cortex 2.0.1 one day after unveiling 2.0.0 to correct some additional bugs. And then some members of the core team and of our growing user community took it for a spin. And all hell broke lose. Well, almost 🙂

Session collisions (when TheHive and Cortex 2 are used on the same machine), analyzer malfunctions, connectivity problems … issues that were not identified during the testing phase, even in a production environment, where everything worked as expected. And we call this ‘Computer Science’. Right, right…

So we worked hard, took out our Code Hammer (it’s like Thor’s but cyber) and blasted away all the bugs that we found out or that were reported to us (arigato gozaimasu!) and we are happy to announce the immediate availability of Cortex 2.0.2, TheHive 3.0.8, Cortexutils 1.2.3 and Cortex-Analyzers 1.9.2.

TL;DR Install or upgrade Cortex 2.0.2, update Cortexutils, git pull the Cortex-analyzers repo to get the latest version of the repository, upgrade to TheHive 3.0.8, follow the Quick Start Guide and have a drink.

If you have time (which is admittedly quite scarce nowadays), please read on the changelogs:

What’s Next?

As stated in the previous post, we will release a new version of Cortex4py in order to make it compatible with Cortex 2, continue the work we started with our MISP Project friends to support MISP attribute enrichment through Cortex 2 (MISP currently only supports enrichment using Cortex 1), and perform a long-overdue overhaul of our documentation. We will also release a brand new version of TheHive4py.

Last but not least, we’ll take a hard look at ourselves and our QA. You expect us from us high quality and we hold ourselves to high standards. And we will deliver.

Support

Something does not work as expected? You have troubles installing or upgrading? Spotted new bugs? No worries, please open issues on GitHub or comment on existing ones, join our user forum, contact us on Gitter, or send us an email at support@thehive-project.org. We are here to help.

Waiting for the menu, one of the numerous guests of TheHive Project’s world-renowned code restaurant grows impatient. He stands up and walks toward the kitchen, looking for a waiter to chastise. It’s certainly a free meal and, looking at the reviews on CodeAdvisor, a delicious one. But guests shouldn’t wait more than two minutes to get a copy of the menu, right?

As he approaches the door leading to the kitchen, it slams open and an all-smiling, all-French-looking man dressed in a bee costume comes out carrying hot plates. Peering at their content, the once angry guest cheers up as he stares down at Cerana 0.4 or TheHive 3.0.4 if you prefer. If the looks and smells of the dish match its taste, this will be a terrific meal.

As he sees how Cerana 0.4 prompted a change of heart of the guest, the waiter coming out of the kitchen where TheHive Chefs were busy creating this new recipe goes on describing its content.

‘Mon bon Monsieur‘, he starts in near-perfect Parisian-English accent, ‘this is the plat du jour, or the dish of the day if you prefer. Even though the mighty Chefs insist on calling it a hotfix, not only it fixes eleven bugs in previous versions but it adds four new features and two enhancements. Would you like me to describe them?’

The guest, feeling hungry, his mouth watery, but feeling bad about what he was about to say to the waiter just a few seconds ago nods. So the waiter goes on and describe how the latest release of TheHive will serve his hunger for efficient though free security incident response platforms even better.

At this point, the guest cannot control his lust so he snatches one of the plates out the waiter’s hands, runs back to his table and start installing Cerana 0.4 to unleash its power and use it to fight cybercrime. Bon appétit !

Feeling Generous? Donate!

As you know, we are a FOSS project and donations are always welcome to make our products even better for the community.

All donations go to Creative Source, the non-profit organization we have created, and we will use them to improve TheHive, Cortex & Hippocampe but also to develop (even better) integrations with other FOSS solutions such as MISP.

Creative Source can also provide so-called professional, entreprise-grade support, help integrating the products, train your analysts before they drain or assist you in specific areas such as developing in-house analyzers for Cortex.

Download & Get Down to Work

If you have an existing installation of TheHive, please follow the migration guide.

If you are performing a fresh installation, read the installation guide corresponding to your needs and enjoy. Please note that you can install TheHive using an RPM or DEB package, use Docker, install it from a binary or build it from sources.

Two months ago, TheHive Chefs announced that Cortex passed the 30 analyzers mark as they added HybridAnalysis, EmergingThreats and Shodan, all three contributed by our continuously growing user community.

It’s 2018 already and to wish you a very happy new DFIR year, Nils and Jérôme got out of their way and reviewed many outstanding pull requests for new analyzers and fixed several bugs. Kudos bees!

MISP WarningLists: Nils strikes again (watch out Jérôme! the youngster is gonna leave you way behind ;).

Onyphe: contributed by Pierre Baudry and Adrien Barchapt. It comes in five different flavors.

PayloadSecurity: submitted by Emmanuel Torquato. The analyzer comes in two flavors.

Robtex: added by… Nils again! It has three flavors.

SinkDB: guess who developed that one? Wow, impressive! How did you figure it out? Yes, Nils!

Tor Blutmagie: contributed by Marc-André Doll.

Tor Project: also contributed by Marc-André Doll.

We would like to wholeheartedly thank all the individuals and teams listed above for their invaluable contributions. So a big merci for your work!

Bluecoat

The Bluecoat analyzer queries the Symantec – previously known as Bluecoat – WebPulse site review API for the currently assigned site category of URLs or domains. The analyzer needs no further configuration. When executed through TheHive, the analyzer produces short and long reports as shown below:

TheHive: Bluecoat 1.0 Analyzer – Short and Long Report Samples

C1fApp

The C1fApp analyzer queries the C1fApp service, an Open Source threat feed aggregation application, using the API for IP addresses, domains and URL.

Before using the analyzer, you need to create an account on the C1fApp website and get the associated API key which you’ll need to provide as a value for the key parameter of the analyzer config section of /etc/cortex/application.conf as shown below. Once you’ve done so, you’ll need to restart Cortex.

When launched using TheHive, the analyzer produces short and long reports such as the following:

TheHive: C1fApp 1.0 Analyzer – Short and Long Report Samples

Censys.io

Censys.io continually monitors every reachable server and device on the Internet, so you can search for them and analyze them in real time. Using the corresponding analyzer, information about a website certificate can be obtained using the associated IP, domain or certificate hash.

In order to use this analyzer, an account at censys.io has to be registered and the API ID and secret need to be added to the Cortex configuration file:

Censys {
uid="<Your ID here>"
key="<Your secret here>"
}

Once done, you’ll have to restart Cortex. When ran from TheHive, the analyzer produces short and long reports such as the following:

TheHive: Censys 1.0 Analyzer – Short and Long Report Samples

Details about the ports can be obtained with a click on the specific button.

MISP WarningLists

In order to detect false positives soon enough in the analysis process, our good friends at the MISP Project published their so called warning lists which contain lists of well-known services or indicators.

This analyzer queries observables against the MISP warning lists. Observables can be an IP address, a hash, a domain, a FQDN or a URL.

To iterate through all the warning lists, the repository itself must be available on the Cortex instance:

git clone https://github.com/MISP/misp-warninglists

We highly recommend you create a cron entry or use a similar mechanism to keep the lists fresh. While the default path for the lists is the misp-warninglists subdirectory it can be adjusted in the configuration file:

To use the analyzer, you need to create an account on the Onyphe website. Provide the API key associated with your account as a value for the key parameter and add the lines below to the config section of /etc/cortex/application.conf then restart the cortex service.

Onyphe {
key = "<insert API key here>"
}

When ran from TheHive, the analyzer produces short and long reports such as the following:

TheHive: Onyphe 1.0 Analyzer – Short and Long Report Samples

PayloadSecurity

The PayloadSecurity analyzer let you submit observables to a on-premises PayloadSecurity instance. To use it, you need to create an account on the PayloadSecurity service. Provide the API/secret pair as values for the key and secretparameters, collect the URL and environmentid of the service, and add the lines below to the ​​config section of /etc/cortex/application.conf. Then restart the cortex service.

When launched through TheHive, the analyzer produces short and long reports such as the following:

TheHive: PayloadSecurity 1.0 Analyzer – Short and Long Report Samples

Robtex

When collecting data about IPs, domains and FQDNs, Robtex can be a good source of information. According to their statistics, they logged over 20 billion DNS resource records. The corresponding analyzer comes in three flavors:

The analyzer uses the free Robtex API which needs no subsequent configuration. However, the free API limits the rate and amount of returned data.

When executed using TheHive, the analyzer produces short and long reports such as the following:

TheHive: Robtex 1.0 Analyzer – Short and Long Report Samples

SinkDB

SinkDB is a private service provided by abuse.ch which collects sinkholed IPs. Access to the service is allowed to trusted partners only. If you think you qualify, you can request an access using the form available on the SinkDB website. This is most likely only granted to certain CSIRTs and CERTs and not to individuals.

Provide the API key associated with your account as a value for the key parameter and add the lines below to the config section of /etc/cortex/application.conf then restart the cortex service.

SinkDB {
key="<insert API key here>"
}

When ran from TheHive, the analyzer produces short and long reports such as the following:

TheHive: SinkDB 1.0 Analyzer – Short and Long Report Samples

Tor Blutmagie

Tor Blutmagie analyzer extracts data from torstatus.blutmagie.de and checks if an observable is linked to a Tor node. The observable can be an IP address, a FQDN or a domain.

In order to check if an IP, domain or FQDN is a Tor exit node, this analyzer queries the Tor status service at Blutmagie.de. The analyzer uses a caching mechanism in order to save some time when doing multiple queries, so the configuration includes parameters for the cache directory and the caching duration.

Provide the lines below to the config section of /etc/cortex/application.conf then restart the cortex service.

TorBlutmagie {
cache {
duration=3600
root=/tmp/cortex/tor_project
}
}

When ran from TheHive, the analyzer produces short and long reports such as the following:

TheHive: Tor Blutmagie 1.0 Analyzer – Short and Long Report Samples

Tor Project

Tor Project analyzer has also been contributed by Marc-André Doll. As the above analyzer, this one checks if an observable is a Tor exit node. This time, however, the source of information is the official Tor network status which can be queried for IP addresses only.

The accepts another parameter, ttl, which is the threshold in seconds for exit nodes before they get discarded. Provide the lines below to the config section of /etc/cortex/application.conf then restart the cortex service.

George Abitbol* doesn’t feel well. Christmas is approaching at a fast pace and the gift he ordered days ago for his girlfriend didn’t find its way to his mailbox yet. He checked it out three times today and save for some spam catalogues on how to take care of his handsome silhouette, nothing resembling a gift showed up.

Picture by Saâd Kadhi

He tried to call the French parcel service to know the whereabouts of the luxurious, limited version of the organic sweet potato chips his lovely Jacqueline* likes so much, which sells for four times the regular price (to bear the cost of the enhanced packaging, certainly), but he couldn’t get hold of a living soul all day long. When he placed the order, the delivery was supposed to be lightning fast. It turned out to be a false promise.

With a sinking heart, he climbs back the stairs leading to his apartment, fetches his laptop and sits on his club chair. With his headphones on, immersed in the wonderful jazz of Christian Scott, he wanders randomly through online shopping sites trying to make out his mind on what other presents he could get for his dear Jacqueline, in time for Christmas.

In the middle of the track called Encryption, featuring the uncanny Elena Pinderhugues on flute, a Twitter notification resonates in his ears. He checks it out and learn that TheHive Chefs, as true and elegant gentlemen, have published a new training VM for Cerana 0.3 (a.k.a. TheHive 3.0.3), including Cortex 1.1.4 and the latest set of Cortex-Analyzers.

George loves bees in all shapes and forms, including digital ones so he swiftly downloads the new VM and as the cautious person he is, he verifies the file’s SHA256 hash: 86a87b70627e8db672c57cb57821461f2564ae9b8087cc22fdd1e7a599c16aed. Wonderful! Everything checks out beautifully. He then imports the file in his VM software, starts the virtual machine and logs in as thehive then types in thehive1234 when asked for the password.

He thoroughly reads the documentation to configure various analyzers and integrate his favourite Security Incident Response Platform with MISP. A few minutes later, his VM is ready for prime time and he starts playing with the new multi-source dashboards and interacting with fellow analysts on Gitter.

And he totally forgets about Jacqueline’s gift.

(*) Any resemblance to real and actual names is purely coincidental.

Correction: Dec 23, 2017An earlier version of this post was referring to a previous training VM that included Cerana 0.2, a version affected by a privilege escalation vulnerability which was corrected in Cerana 0.3. Some typos were corrected as well.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave with no Internet connection during the last year or so, you certainly know a thing or two about Cortex, TheHive’s perfect sidekick, which allows you to analyze observables, at scale, using its 30+ analyzers.

As of this writing, the latest version of Cortex is 1.1.4. Cortex can be queried using its Web UI for quick assessment of an observable. But the true power of Cortex is unleashed when the engine is queried through its REST API, either from TheHive (which can leverage multiple Cortex instances), from alternative SIRPs (Security Incident Response Platforms), Threat Intelligence Platforms and programs thanks to Cortex4py. Indeed, when Cortex is called through the API, it can analyze large sets of observables. Each analysis generates a job. Jobs are queued on first-created, first-executed basis.

However, Cortex 1 has three limitations:

It does not support authentication. If you install it and don’t shield it from abuse (using a firewall for example), anyone can submit analysis jobs and consume your query quotas for subscription-based, commercial services, for example. Non-CSIRT/CERT/SOC personnel or threat actors can also view all the jobs you’ve executed (what observables you have analyzed, using which analyzers and what the associated results were).

It does not support rate-limiting. All it takes to ruin your quotas is an unexperienced analyst who’d create a case in TheHive from a MISP event containing thousands of attributes, select them all from the newly created case, and run them through various Cortex analyzers.

It has no persistence. If you restart the Cortex service or the host it runs on, all your analysis results will disappear. Please note that if you query Cortex from TheHive, the latter will keep a copy of all the reports generated by the analyzers.

Moreover, analyzer configuration is not as easy as we’d like it to be. Enters Cortex 2.

Authentication, Organizations, Configuration and Rate Limiting

Cortex 2, due for release in February 2018, almost a year after the release of the first version, will support all the authentication methods TheHive supports: LDAP, Active Directory, local accounts, API keys and/or SSO using X.509 certificates (an experimental feature as of this writing).

Once created, users will be associated to an organization. Each organization has its own configuration: which analyzers are enabled, associated API keys and/or authentication credentials for services (VirusTotal, PassiveTotal, MISP, …) and a query quota.

For example, if you have an overall quota on VT for 10,000 queries/month, you can limit the number of queries to 5000 for org A, 3000 for org B and leave 2000 for other uses. Rate limits can be configured per month or per day.

Cortex 2 — Architecture

More on Organizations

Organizations will be ideal for multi-tenant Cortex instances deployed, for a example, by the central CSIRT of a large company. They can then create orgs for their regional SOCs. Commercial teams such as MSSPs will also be able to use a single instance to serve all their customers.

Graphical Interface Enhancements

Administrators will not have to edit /etc/cortex/application.conf by hand to enable and configure analyzers per org. They will be able to do so from the Web UI. The Web UI will also allow them to manage users, orgs and authentication tokens when applicable.

Report Persistence and Freshness

Cortex 2 will use ES 5 for storage, like TheHive. That way, you will no longer lose your existing jobs when you reboot the Cortex host or restart the service. You will also be able to query historical results to monitor changes and so on. We will also add an optional parameter to make Cortex 2 to serve the latest report generated by an analyzer if it is called again, on the same observable in the last X seconds or minutes. That way, we’ll avoid running the same queries again and again for the same observable and thus consuming quotas and CPU and storage resources.

Pricing

Cortex 2 is a significant development over Cortex 1 … but it’ll still cost you nothing as it will remain free and open source. We could feel you itching when you started reading this paragraph. Chill out! But if you are willing to support the project, you can donate to Creative Source, the non-profit organization we have created to sustain TheHive, Cortex and Hippocampe in the long run. Interested? Contact us at support@thehive-project.org then.